Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wants to help Britain get its computer science curriculum in order, and he thinks that the $35 Raspberry Pi computer can help. "The success of the BBC Micro in the 1980s shows what's possible," Schmidt said Wednesday during a talk at London's Science Museum called "Why Science Matters. " "There's no reason why Raspberry Pi shouldn't have the same impact, with the right support. " Schmidt's shout-out to the bare-bones computer that is about the size of a credit card, and the price of a textbook, came right after he announced that Google would be sponsoring the charity Teach First in a project to take more than 100 "exceptional" graduates in the computer science field and prepare them to teach in secondary schools.

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt testified that his company developed the Android operating system using the Java programming language after partnership talks with Sun Microsystems Inc. fell through and Sun made no demand for a license to use Java. Sun sought $30 million to $50 million and tight control over Java's use for Android, Schmidt told jurors Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco during Oracle Corp.'s trial against Google. When deal negotiations fell through in 2006, Google built the Android software for mobile devices using aspects of the Java platform without infringing on Sun's intellectual property, he said.

Larry Page isn't big on sharing. But on Thursday he published a 3,459-word “update” after his first year back as chief executive of Google. In it, he underscored Google's commitment to making big long-term bets and to its social networkGoogle+, but he did not make any big revelations or provide any financial details. Google is due to report first-quarter financial results next week. Page took over from Eric Schmidt as CEO last April. It is his second stint as Google's CEO, his first as the CEO of a publicly traded company.

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt, defending his company on Capitol Hill for the first time as it faces increased scrutiny of its operations, bluntly denied that his company "cooked" its search engine results to send users to its growing stable of online services. Schmidt faced tough questions Wednesday from members of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, who have been investigating complaints by competitors that Google is abusing its dominance in the online search market to harm competition.

June 2, 2011 | By Jessica Guynn and Dawn Chmielewski, Los Angeles Times

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt admitted at a technology conference that he tried unsuccessfully to team up with Facebook, which posed a major competitive threat to Google's advertising business, but that the social-networking phenom rebuffed his efforts. Schmidt, who stepped down as chief executive in April to turn over day-to-day control to co-founder Larry Page, said he should have pushed harder. "Three years ago I wrote memos talking about this general problem. I knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it," he said during a 90-minute onstage interview at the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes organized by the technology blog AllThingsD.

When he was 12, Larry Page read a biography of inventor Nikola Tesla who ? eclipsed by rival Thomas Edison ? died penniless even though he had figured out how to deliver electricity on a massive scale. "You don't want to be Tesla," Page told Fortune magazine in 2008. "He was one of the greatest inventors, but it's a sad, sad story. He couldn't commercialize anything, he could barely fund his own research. You'd want to be more like Edison. If you invent something, that doesn't necessarily help anybody.

Facing new threats to its role as the world's dominant Internet company, Google Inc. announced a surprise executive shake-up that appears to put innovation and technology ? not management ? in the driver's seat. Larry Page, Google's 37-year-old co-founder, will reclaim the top job from Eric Schmidt, the boardroom veteran who brought corporate discipline to the fledgling Web start-up a decade ago, helping it become the world's most popular search engine. But even though it has matured into a powerful company with a rich stock price and enviable profits, Google is facing increasing competition from younger upstarts such as Facebook Inc., the social networking phenomenon that is vying with Google for Internet advertising revenue.

Google Inc. may have gotten itself unfriended by Facebook. The Silicon Valley search giant will unveil a social networking feature this fall, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, confirming that the company was building a product to put it in direct competition with Facebook and its 500 million users. Google will introduce what Schmidt referred to as "a social layer" into its existing suite of online search, video and mapping products. For months, Google has been making acquisitions and recruiting talent for the secretive project dubbed "Google Me. " The speculation intensified in August when Google bought Angstro, a company that organizes news for social networks, and hired its co-founder Rohit Khare.

When you walk onto the set of Jesse Draper's Silicon Valley-based talk show, you catch on pretty quickly that this isn't CNBC. The chairs are pink. The walls? Pink. Draper's snug dress? Yep. Her high heels are pink too, with what are technically called sparkly things on them. And the video-game guitar she is handing to "Guitar Hero" co-creator Kai Huang, who's wearing a pink cape and matching headband? Also pink. "They are by no means entertainers," Draper, 26, says of her tech-whiz guests, "so I wanted to make them more entertaining, make them real people and make them have a little fun."